A Houston education insider sent me a commentary on the Houston Independent School District’s search for a superintendent, which he characterizes as calculated to install a leader who’s part of the movement pushing the current brand of “school reform.”
That brand – backed by a cadre of billionaire “venture philanthropists,” emphasizes charter schools, private operators, deriding educators and putting power in the hands of non-educators, emphasizing testing and No Child Left Behind, and placing school districts under the control of mayors. It seeks to limit the clout of educators, parents and teachers’ unions.
As more and more urban school districts take that direction, it becomes a movement we in San Francisco should be keeping an eye on. So I decided to post the Houston correspondent’s commentary. He asked to remain anonymous due to the usual concerns about career repercussions.
The Wolf at the Door: Are school-reform radicals hijacking the Houston Independent School District's Superintendent process?
The Houston Independent School District (HISD) has avoided becoming just another urban system in perpetual crisis. Its leaders have encouraged racial and political moderation and incremental reforms. The district pioneered magnet programs, and continues to offer families a host of specialized, high-quality choices, particularly at the high-school level. Its students outperform school districts which have opted for radical reform in most categories of the recently published National Assessment of Educational Progress comparisons.
Now some members of HISD's nine-member elected school board want to change course and adopt drastic measures. They want Houston to follow in the footsteps of school districts like Philadelphia, Washington D. C., New Orleans and New York City by choosing a new superintendent in the mold of Michelle Rhee or Joel Klein [chancellors of D.C. and New York City schools, respectively].
According to HISD board member Paula Harris, HISD has gone as far as it can under the current model of reform; now it needs a change agent to “shake up” the district, which she labels a “monstrosity.” Natasha Kamrani, wife of the CEO of YES PREP charter schools, has repeatedly mentioned both Rhee and Klein as the kind of leader HISD should pursue. Harvin C. Moore IV, a founding member of the KIPP board and its longtime treasurer, is another supporter of uprooting reform.
The school board selected the firm Heidrick & Struggles over four competing firms to manage its superintendent search. This is a sign the school board's reform-radicals may have their way. Heidrick & Struggles has a history of directing districts to candidates advocating charter schools and subcontracting to private agencies, specifically in Philadelphia and Buffalo. Heidrick & Struggles also has close ties to the charter-school movement and to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's mayoral control approach in New York City.
Richard Greene, a managing partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Chicago headquarters, was recently the chief operating officer for the KIPP national foundation. KIPP plans a $100 million expansion in Houston. KIPP and its junior partner, YES PREP, hope to use this private money to create a separate school district of 21,000 students cut from the heart of HISD.
The Heidrick & Stuggles board of directors includes two high-level Bloomberg allies. Robert E. Knowling is the former founding CEO of the New York Leadership Academy, Mayor Bloomberg’s factory for churning out new principals who see things his way. Richard Beattie heads up New Visions for New Schools, a partnership nonprofit supporting Bloomberg's reforms in some New York City schools.
Beattie is also chairman of the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm, which provided free legal services in arguably the most important school-finance suit in New York City's history. This suit brought several billion dollars in extra state funding to the city schools, which aids the big-spending mayor who has upped school spending by five billion bucks in five years.
One major candidate for Houston mayor, Councilman Peter Brown, has called for creating a mayor-controlled district from the inner-city portions of HISD, allowing more suburban areas to carve out new districts.
Heidrick & Struggles and school board members have emphasized that this search would be open and transparent, without a predetermined outcome. HISD Board President Lawrence Marshall has promised “100% transparency.” The firm has held 30 community and stakeholder meetings to come up with a job description and list of qualities the next district leader should have. The list turned out to be highly amorphous, including just about every imaginable positive quality one could desire in a political leader.
HISD's board is replacing Dr. Abelardo Saavadra, the first Hispanic to hold that position in a district where 60% of students are of Hispanic origin. Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg recently derided Saavedra for his lack of political savvy, and some on the school board seem to agree, nearly pushing him out last year.
Saavedra had a tendency to announce his policy proposals well ahead of time, and hold town-hall meetings all over the city before finalizing his decisions. In some cases, as when he sought to reduce transportation for magnet students this past spring, Saavedra was opposed by organized groups of parents and his proposals were nixed by the school board. This sort of popular revolt will not be a problem for future superintendents if advocates of mayoral control have their way.
Once Heidrick & Struggles presents its candidates to HISD's board, parents and teachers' organizations will have limited, if any, influence on the final decision. The search firm and the HISD board have decided to issue the name of only one finalist.
Comments
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is encouraging mayors to take over urban school districts, and is applying financial pressure to have states adopt laws friendly to charters. He poked his nose in internal New York politics recently, asking the legislature to permit Mayor Bloomberg to continue one-person control of NYC schools. I guess these people are serious about this one-size-fits-all solution. And their solution is top down all the way.
I have not seen any of this information in the local newspapers.
Seems to me, as your correspondent says, Houston has done quite well with its current governance system, which allowed great charters like KIPP and YES to bloom. The fact that its board has members who appreciate what Rhee and Klein have done shows that they are smart people. They would be better off, I think, keeping control of the system in their own hands rather than risking a mayor, chosen by voters who don't know the issues as well as they do, who may decide to go in a very different, and possibly disruptive, direction. DC needed a shock treatment, but I don't think Houston does.
I would count the birth of KIPP and YES in HISD as a positive sign of HISD's pragmatism and willingness to innovate also. Their birth is a gift to urban education. But if the next Superintendent sits back and lets them draw 21,000 of our best working-class students, I would count that as the great sell out. Mr. Feinberg challenges us to compete, and compete we should, in the same way that major corporations compete with one another, using every available means and resource. Maybe the better approach would have been cooperation and joint planning, but the charters, like businessmen, seem to the thrill of capturing market share, rather than figuring where they can fit in and help the whole system of schools to improve (ie, the middle schools.)
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